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“Should we close our national parks?”
The late Bernard DeVoto asked this question in a powerful essay
published in 1953. I don’t believe that he really meant to lock the
gate and throw the keys away, but rather to awaken the public to the
critical, serious issues the parks faced at that time in history.
 I
feel the same question should be asked today. If anything, the issues
are more critical now than in DeVoto’s day, half a century ago.
Consider that in 1992 the University of Arizona Press published my
book, Regreening the National Parks, and now I am working on a new
updated edition. Virtually all my research and continued study show
that our treasured national parks have suffered from political
interference and profiteering power, and are being reduced to
commercialized popcorn playgrounds.
I hope that I can help to reverse this course and restore the esteem
our national parks deserve. Toward that end I invite and welcome your
input on how you see the parks, with their pluses and minuses, and your
suggestions on how to best protect and manage them in the public
interest. But first, this evidence:
Olympic National Park, Washington. After seven years in the
making, the park has released its final General Management Plan (GMP),
covering 900 pages in two volumes, and meant to guide park management
for the next 20 years. A critique in the newsletter of Olympic Park
Associates, the citizen group of the region, notes: “It takes some
positive steps toward ecosystem protection. But despite the urging of
conservationists, it tends to be overly focused on motorized use and
presents a timid approach to preserving the wilderness integrity of
this world-class park.”
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. The Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals has before it a brief filed by a citizen coalition challenging
the park’s Colorado River Management Plan as heavily weighted in favor
of motorized tour boats and helicopter exchanges. The lawsuit contends
those uses in the river corridor fail to preserve wilderness values,
and fail to protect the Grand Canyon’s natural soundscape in violation
of the NPS 1916 Organic Act. It challenges commercialization of the
river in favor of concession craft while severely limiting self-guided
river runners.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina-Tennessee.
Conservation organizations early in July conducted a press conference
in Knoxville to protest the Bush administration proposed change in EPA
regulations that would result in worsening air pollution. The rule
change would alter power-plant emission-reporting requirements in a way
that would lead to serious underestimates of pollution increases in the
park. It would make it easier for new coal-fired power plants to gain
approval, and six such plants have been proposed within a 200-mile
radius of the park. Great Smokies already is the most heavily polluted
national park.
Yellowstone National Park, Montana-Idaho-Wyoming. “From
mid-December to mid-March Yellowstone bans automobiles from most of the
park, but it welcomes snowmobiles on 189 miles of snow-covered roads.
One of these machines can emit as many hydrocarbons as 250 cars – and
there are about 80,000 snowmobiles in the park each season. Park
employees complain of headaches, nausea and throat irritation from the
pollution, and fresh air has to be pumped into park entrance booths.
The Bluewater Network, leader of the national campaign to keep
snowmobiles out of the park, calculates that in addition to fouling the
air, two-stroke snowmobile engines dump 180,000 to 210,000 gallons of
unburned gasoline and motor oil on Yellowstone’s ecosystem each
season.” – Ted Williams, Forest Magazine, Summer 2008.
++
Yellowstone is our so-called "flagship" national park, but hardly
protected as such. In California, tight little Yosemite Valley, with
30,000 visitors daily, is more like a city than a park. These places
are called "sacrifice areas," as though to legitimize the sacrifice.
John Muir said, "Come to the mountains, for here there is rest." He
didn't say it would be in a lodging facility with bath, bar,
restaurant, entertainment, bike rentals, ice-skating and room service.
If that valley were relieved of one-half of its buildings, automobiles
and people, it would become twice the national park it is today.
In my agenda there should be fewer roads in the parks, and no off-road
vehicles, no airplane or helicopter sightseeing disruptions of
pioneering adventure. National parks should not be reduced to popcorn
playgrounds or theme parks, but preserved as sanctuaries, sustaining
the soul of America; they are priceless time capsules for tomorrow that
we are privileged to know and enjoy today.
++
But there is more:
Here’s my answer to the question of whether the Blue Ridge Parkway
[Virginia-North Carolina] should offer visitors more modern amenities
and a cushier experience: No. Absolutely not…
According to recent news reports, the parkway is working on a new
general management plan, and making things more “comfortable” for those
who venture there is among changes under discussion. They’re talking
about adding electrical hookups and hot showers for the campgrounds,
and TVs and telephones for the lodges. They’re even talking about
paving trails in the woods so that people can ride bikes without
worrying about such natural obstacles as rocks and roots.
What terrible ideas…making changes that would put new barriers between
visitors and nature would be a big mistake. We have far too many
already.” -- Linda Brinson, editorial page editor, Winston-Salem
Journal, July 6, 2008.
++
…The reason for the drop in park visitation is nothing other than
simple economics. Americans are being priced out of the parks by
costs. A weekend visit to Yosemite National Park for a family of four
is crowding the $1000 mark. Hotel rooms in the park average $200 a
night. Add entry fees, gas, meals and a guided tour and you are talking
big bucks. Even a bare ground campsite runs $19 a night.
You fail to understand that national parks are not commodities to be
bought, sold, or interpreted solely in economic terms. Places such as
Yosemite and Yellowstone were not established as moneymakers. They
represent the best of the American earth -- and under law are to be
held inalienable for all times…
Furthermore, it was a federal judge who ruled that the park service had
to follow the law concerning the carrying capacity. Blame the
judiciary or the lawmakers. It was the early conservationists who
envisioned the concept of wildland preservation. -- Eugene Rose, Letter
to the Editor, Fresno Bee. (Rose is a retired reporter who for years
covered national parks and forests in the California Sierra Nevada and
was known as the “conscience of Yosemite.” In 1987 he revealed that the
Yosemite Park and Curry Company grossed $87 million for its exclusive
contract but paid a concession fee of $585,000.)
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There aren't many places left where you can gaze skyward at night and
see stars. Thankfully, many Western national parks are still among
those places. You'd also expect to see panoramic daytime vistas in
places such as Utah's Capitol Reef and Canyonlands national parks, but
on some days, you may be disappointed. The reason: air pollution. The
two Utah parks are among 10 nationwide identified by the National Parks
Conservation Association as being near to losing the clear air we've
all come to expect at our public recreational lands. Others aren't far
behind.
And if a federal proposal to relax air-quality standards is
implemented, those scenic views could be further threatened. That must
not happen, for several reasons, both aesthetic and economic.
National park visitors should be able, literally, to get away from it
all -- the noise, crowds, smog, traffic and nasty fumes from power
plants and vehicle exhaust that they probably encounter at home -- when
they travel to the parks… Editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune, July 7,
2008.
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Any clear vision for the national parks of the 21st Century must uphold
their reputation in the worldwide realm of parks and protected areas.
That is both challenge and responsibility, as President John F. Kennedy
recognized. In welcoming delegates to the First World Conference on
National Parks held in Yellowstone National Park in 1962, Kennedy
declared:
Growth and development of national park and reserve programs throughout
the world are important to the welfare of the people of every nation.
We must have places where we can find release from the tensions of an
increasingly industrialized civilization, where we can have personal
contact with the natural environment which sustains us. To this end,
permanent preservation of the outstanding scenic and scientific assets
of every country, and of the magnificent and varied wildlife which can
be so easily endangered by human activity, is imperative. National
parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of our
national resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample
portion of our national resources as national parks and reserves, thus
ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as
we know it today…
An earlier president, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1903, after camping with
John Muir among the ancient sequoias of Yosemite, listening to the
hermit thrush and the waterfalls tumbling down sheer cliffs, wrote that
"It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral far vaster and more
beautiful than any built by the hand of man." Then TR went to Stanford
University, where he declared: “There is nothing more practical than
the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that
appeals to the higher emotions of mankind.”
++
In contrast, the George W. Bush administration is probably the most
openly pro-big business, anti-environmental administration in a
century, perhaps the worst ever, with industry people appointed to key
positions throughout the government and serving the corporate cause.
Bush rejected the global warming treaty; cut or eliminated renewable
energy and energy efficiency programs, and denied funds for research
into wind, solar and geothermal energy. Of the many environmental
changes brought about by the Bush White House, none illustrates this
point better than the so-called “Clear Skies” program. It isn’t about
clearing the skies at all, but about allowing power companies and large
factories to change established and effective rules to their own
benefit. Instead of clearing the skies, the Bush administration’s new
rules would result in serious emissions increases.
++
Testimony at an oversight hearing of the House Natural Resources
Committee in mid-July 2008 revealed that four highly placed officials
of the Bush administration had inappropriately influenced endangered
species decision-making. "A disconcerting picture has emerged of
officials working at the highest levels of the Interior Department
continuing to tamper with the endangered species program, trumping
science with politics. The practice is pervasive…" said Rep. Nick J.
Rahall (D-WV), the committee chairman. The hearing was held as a forum
for the release of new findings in an ongoing Government Accountability
Office (GAO) investigation into the well-publicized review of the
politically tainted endangered species decisions made by former Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald.
MacDonald had resigned in May 2007, following the release of a scathing
Inspector General report.
GAO named Craig Manson, former Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife
and Parks; Brian Waidmann, current Chief of Staff to Interior Secretary
Dirk Kempthorne; Todd Willens, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Fish, Wildlife and Parks; and Randal Bowman, current Special Assistant
to Assistant Secretary Lyle Laverty. "Today we hear that instead of
cleaning up its mess, the agency has merely swept it under a rug,”
Rahall said.
++
The Interior Department under Secretary Gale Norton, a Bush appointee,
was scarred with scandal and corruption. The National Park Service,
under Director Fran Maniella, was heavily scarred on various fronts as
well -- the worst through efforts to undo and recast the basic mission
of the agency. This was to be done through “a secret Interior
Department attempt to rewrite and override ninety years of laws, rules
and court rulings – changes that would ‘hijack’ America’s national
parks, leaving them wide open for what are now barred uses…”
I am quoting here from a 2005 statement by Bill Wade, a retired former park superintendent, about whom more below.
Suffice here to record that both Norton and Maniella are gone, replaced
by Dirk Kempthorne and Mary Bomar, who speak more softly while pursuing
the same essential agenda. They want to “reinvent” the parks, replacing
preservation with promotion and “partnerships” with money interests.
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Stephen T. Mather, the first national parks director, built a field
force as a model of honorable, ethical and professional federal
employment. He inspired the National Park Service "mystique," a spirit
of mission, a willingness to stand tough against what he called
"desecration of the people's playground for the benefit of a few
individuals or corporations." Surely Mather would look with favor on
the efforts of Bill Wade and colleagues of the Coalition of National
Park Service Retirees to prevent “desecration of the people’s
playgrounds.” The Coalition, which now has 650 members, is willing to
take on tough issues, including the latest zany proposal – endorsed by
the Bush administration -- to allow visitors to carry loaded firearms
in the parks. The retired rangers know whereof they speak when they say
they never responded to a crime that might have been prevented had a
visitor not been carrying a weapon. But they did see cases where
visitors shot wildlife or fired wildly in crowded campgrounds.
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To sum up, national parks when they were new yielded discovery,
adventure, and challenge. They should always do that. And they can, if
we set our minds and hearts to it. As the rest of the country becomes
developed, and supercivilized, national parks should be safeguarded to
represent another side of America, free of technology, free of commerce
and crowds, free of instant gratification, a pioneer, self-reliant side
of America. I do not want them closed. I want them to serve as models
for a quality environment of life. Now send me an email with your views
on park issues and needs, and how to best protect and manage them in
the public interest.
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- Activism 
